10/24/2006 update:

I decided to take a break form programming and build my audio/voice circuit for the Soundgin. I spent about 2 hours Sunday laying out and soldering the circuit provided by the manufacturer. I didn’t get a chance to test it until that night and it didn’t work … well it did make noise, but not what I was expecting. So I had to wait till lunch Monday to do some debugging. Rather than look at the schematic and trace the line, I draw the schematic based on my soldered circuit. I used that link to creating your own graphing paper to generate PCB graph paper (i.e. dots versus lines) spaced at .2” so I could see what I had. Everything was correct but I had forgotten one connection from the low pass filter to ground. I added it after dinner last night and bingo, I get the demo with plays all the allophones to work.

This morning before leaving for work I added a header to allow me to jumper the demo input to ground, and either use 5V for the LM386 or a 9V lead if I need/want more volume. I also plan to play with adding capacitance to the gain pins.

I had hoped to test the Soundgin software with an RS232 to TTL cable I made ages ago for an HC11 Botboard. Unfortunately, I made a guess as to which pins should RX and TX when I soldered my circuit to the header and I guessed wrong ;) Oh well, with my new crimps I’ll be able to redo the cable in no time. You see, I tried to fix it in the field and ended up pulling one of the wires out ... doh!

Well, back to my list. I think I’ll work on #3 next. That’s the line sensor circuit. That will also require #2. Then I’ll tackle #5. I have 5 of the 3252SB chips in my inventory.

Onward,
Jay